When previews for the new Mortal Kombat started premiering I squealed like a 10 year old who just saw Justin Bieber drive by. Since I was little I had always spent my hard earned quarters on the Mortal Kombat arcade machines that I would seem to frequently find myself around. Needless to say the nostalgia I felt at first has passed, and, well there are some good things, about Mortal Kombat, and some bad things.
Lets start off with the bad things so that we can end on a good note, that sounds like a plan.
First and foremost, one issue I have is what seems to be the obvious favoritism towards the PS3 community. Now before anybody says ANYTHING I will say that I myself only own a PS3, I don't own an Xbox 360. However the fact that the PS3 copy of Mortal Kombat includes Kratos, while the 360 version has no additional character for themselves is kind of disheartening. I mean I can off the top of my head think of two people you could make as characters for the 360 copy; Master Chief, or the Arbiter. Both come from an Xbox exclusive title (Halo of course) and either could easily be incorporated into the fighting style of Mortal Kombat (I mean with the exception of the energy sword it's kind of like Stryker with heavy battle armor). I am sure it would have meant a lot to the 360 community is a little bit more time went into giving them their own special little character to call their own for their copy.
Now Mortal Kombat is a fighting game, and as such is most fun when played in multiplayer format, whether this be 1v1 with friends, or doing a 2 player tag team with said friends. Even with this in mind Mortal Kombat has a rather long single player story mode. Now for those who have watched the Mortal Kombat movies....ya that is kind of what the story mode is, only with a few changes here and there. Now how is any of this bad? Simple, the difficulty curve. If I were to graph out the games difficulty curve, it would look like a mountain range, with the final boss fight against Shao Kahn being so far up I would need an extra 3 pieces of paper to draw the line. While playing in story mode there are times where you encounter tag team matches, matches where you must defeat two opponents, on your own. You need to kill both opponents each round, and you don't have any partners of your own. So it's basically like fighting one person with half a health bar. These little instances are mainly what spike up the difficulty curve, because each of the two people you have to face are scaled with the games difficulty progression. So lets say the fight before the difficulty was say, set to 4. Now in the tag team match both of your enemies are set to 5. The difficulty increased, AND you need to kill two of them, HOLY CRAP!
My last issue with the game stems off from what I was just talking about, the game's difficulty curve, mainly when you hit the last fight with Shao Kahn (oh this isn't spoilers, if anyone is surprised you don't know Mortal Kombat). First it needs to be stated that all damage you to do Shao Kahn is halved. Next Shao Kahn does MASSIVE damage to you, usually about 8-12% per hit (i did my best to average out after a few matches). Then he has one move, that if he hits you he instantly does 52% damage *this is his X-Ray ability). Need I go on? You know what, ya I will actually. He also has an 'invincibility' mode on at certain points which makes it so you can't disable him or knock him up, and the worst, WORST thing of all is that he spams all his abilities. Ya that hammer that stuns you for 5 seconds? Spams it every 3 seconds, yay stun lock....... I am all in favor of challenging bosses in games. I enjoy having to figure out a way to defeat someone in hopes that I will have to use all the skills I have so far gathered to defeat them. You know how you beat Shao Kahn? Every time he attacks you just jump behind him, and Uppercut. that or you spam some other sort of move to beat him. I still have yet to actually beat Shao Kahn, because every time I almost win the 2nd round he spams his stun hammer against me and I lose. But I can right now tell you how I will feel when I finally beat him. I won't feel any sense of accomplishment, I won't feel any sense of joy. I will just be glad that the game is done and over with and I don't ever have to go back to story mode. IT IS NOT GOOD WHEN A GAME MAKES YOU FEEL THAT WAY!!!!!!!!
Okay....now lets brighten things up a bit, why exactly is Mortal Kombat good.
I stated before that Mortal Kombat, being a fighting game is at it's best when played with people, whether online or offline. And Mortal Komabt really shines in this aspect. With the ability to play with up to 4 players in offline mode there is so much fun to be had. I have yet to even try out the game's multiplayer yet most of what I have heard of it are more words of praise. If there is one thing Mortal Kombat does right, it's anything having to do with playing with multiple people.
One interesting addition to the Mortal Kombar game was the Krypt (yes I spelled that right). As you do stuff you rack up Koins (spelled that right too
) which you can use in the Krypt to unlock alternate costumes, fatalities, bonus and concept art, and so much more. The Krypt lets see actually see all the hard work that went into making this game and allows you to even further appreciate it's development.
If the story mode's difficulty curve if what I hated the most, then the 'Test Your Luck' mini game is it's opposite, the thing I love most about the game. It's a nice little addition to the 'Test Your Might' etc. sections that have been in the Mortal Kombat series' challenge towers. Basically you pick who you want to fight with, and then you are off to the slot machine! The machine randomly picks your opponent then 3 random bonuses/defects that could affect you, your enemy, or even both of you. So far my favorite was using Noob Saibot and getting Armless Kombat (both me and my opponent got our arms ripped off, it was even funnier when that happened against Jax) and then Zombie combat. So we were two armless zombies literally kicking each other to death. Oh it's amazing.
All in all Mortal Kombat is a game where the negatives seem to be outweighed by it's high points. If you enjoy fighting games then this is definitely a game for your collection. However if you like games because you always want to do the story mode...yay....just go back to Portal 2.
-Adam Gadal
Lets start off with the bad things so that we can end on a good note, that sounds like a plan.
First and foremost, one issue I have is what seems to be the obvious favoritism towards the PS3 community. Now before anybody says ANYTHING I will say that I myself only own a PS3, I don't own an Xbox 360. However the fact that the PS3 copy of Mortal Kombat includes Kratos, while the 360 version has no additional character for themselves is kind of disheartening. I mean I can off the top of my head think of two people you could make as characters for the 360 copy; Master Chief, or the Arbiter. Both come from an Xbox exclusive title (Halo of course) and either could easily be incorporated into the fighting style of Mortal Kombat (I mean with the exception of the energy sword it's kind of like Stryker with heavy battle armor). I am sure it would have meant a lot to the 360 community is a little bit more time went into giving them their own special little character to call their own for their copy.
Now Mortal Kombat is a fighting game, and as such is most fun when played in multiplayer format, whether this be 1v1 with friends, or doing a 2 player tag team with said friends. Even with this in mind Mortal Kombat has a rather long single player story mode. Now for those who have watched the Mortal Kombat movies....ya that is kind of what the story mode is, only with a few changes here and there. Now how is any of this bad? Simple, the difficulty curve. If I were to graph out the games difficulty curve, it would look like a mountain range, with the final boss fight against Shao Kahn being so far up I would need an extra 3 pieces of paper to draw the line. While playing in story mode there are times where you encounter tag team matches, matches where you must defeat two opponents, on your own. You need to kill both opponents each round, and you don't have any partners of your own. So it's basically like fighting one person with half a health bar. These little instances are mainly what spike up the difficulty curve, because each of the two people you have to face are scaled with the games difficulty progression. So lets say the fight before the difficulty was say, set to 4. Now in the tag team match both of your enemies are set to 5. The difficulty increased, AND you need to kill two of them, HOLY CRAP!
My last issue with the game stems off from what I was just talking about, the game's difficulty curve, mainly when you hit the last fight with Shao Kahn (oh this isn't spoilers, if anyone is surprised you don't know Mortal Kombat). First it needs to be stated that all damage you to do Shao Kahn is halved. Next Shao Kahn does MASSIVE damage to you, usually about 8-12% per hit (i did my best to average out after a few matches). Then he has one move, that if he hits you he instantly does 52% damage *this is his X-Ray ability). Need I go on? You know what, ya I will actually. He also has an 'invincibility' mode on at certain points which makes it so you can't disable him or knock him up, and the worst, WORST thing of all is that he spams all his abilities. Ya that hammer that stuns you for 5 seconds? Spams it every 3 seconds, yay stun lock....... I am all in favor of challenging bosses in games. I enjoy having to figure out a way to defeat someone in hopes that I will have to use all the skills I have so far gathered to defeat them. You know how you beat Shao Kahn? Every time he attacks you just jump behind him, and Uppercut. that or you spam some other sort of move to beat him. I still have yet to actually beat Shao Kahn, because every time I almost win the 2nd round he spams his stun hammer against me and I lose. But I can right now tell you how I will feel when I finally beat him. I won't feel any sense of accomplishment, I won't feel any sense of joy. I will just be glad that the game is done and over with and I don't ever have to go back to story mode. IT IS NOT GOOD WHEN A GAME MAKES YOU FEEL THAT WAY!!!!!!!!
Okay....now lets brighten things up a bit, why exactly is Mortal Kombat good.
I stated before that Mortal Kombat, being a fighting game is at it's best when played with people, whether online or offline. And Mortal Komabt really shines in this aspect. With the ability to play with up to 4 players in offline mode there is so much fun to be had. I have yet to even try out the game's multiplayer yet most of what I have heard of it are more words of praise. If there is one thing Mortal Kombat does right, it's anything having to do with playing with multiple people.
One interesting addition to the Mortal Kombar game was the Krypt (yes I spelled that right). As you do stuff you rack up Koins (spelled that right too
) which you can use in the Krypt to unlock alternate costumes, fatalities, bonus and concept art, and so much more. The Krypt lets see actually see all the hard work that went into making this game and allows you to even further appreciate it's development.If the story mode's difficulty curve if what I hated the most, then the 'Test Your Luck' mini game is it's opposite, the thing I love most about the game. It's a nice little addition to the 'Test Your Might' etc. sections that have been in the Mortal Kombat series' challenge towers. Basically you pick who you want to fight with, and then you are off to the slot machine! The machine randomly picks your opponent then 3 random bonuses/defects that could affect you, your enemy, or even both of you. So far my favorite was using Noob Saibot and getting Armless Kombat (both me and my opponent got our arms ripped off, it was even funnier when that happened against Jax) and then Zombie combat. So we were two armless zombies literally kicking each other to death. Oh it's amazing.
All in all Mortal Kombat is a game where the negatives seem to be outweighed by it's high points. If you enjoy fighting games then this is definitely a game for your collection. However if you like games because you always want to do the story mode...yay....just go back to Portal 2.
-Adam Gadal
